#they're all so good but i can't get over jan maas

[delfvoid]

Masculine Melancholy, Ted Lasso (2021)

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

help this post has infected my brain i can't stop thinking about some journalist ex-colleague of trent's just watching the entirety of richmond's football team + several members of the staff (including ted lasso) scoop him up and sprint across the pitch holding him aloft. this has so much comedic potential. im just picturing so many different like. tableaus. jan maas giving an absolutely stoic trent crimm a piggyback ride. exact same position but it's jamie tartt and trent crimm appears to be pointing directly ahead as tartt cackles and charges. they topple over. dani rojas has elected to carry him bridal style for some reason. sam obinsanya, who was supposed to be one of the reasonable ones, follows his example. one of the players has trent fully sitting on his shoulders somehow and somehow they don't fall. both the participating coaches (ted and beard) simply throw him over their shoulder and book it. for one of them he appears to be laughing loudly for the other his arms are crossed and he is making such a pointed expression of grumpy tolerance (like a cat who has been picked up and is resigned to it but he's not gonna like it!) that it is clearly exaggerated. trent makes exactly one (1) attempt to carry someone else (it's roy) and he actually does fairly well considering but they do end up sprawled on the grass and just. roy flat on his back staring at the sky, trent having half pushed himself up on his elbows, hair a complete mess, laughing. they're all arguing about times. there are fans sitting in on practice who can Just See All This. like. you know how there's like bullshit nothing articles about dumb shit? just. some "article" that's like "richmond appear to be doing wife-carrying races as training for some reason, and even more bafflingly, trent crimm appears to be the wife in question. anyway here's our top twenty photos of this because it is funny and weirdly wholesome." and then it's all over twitter for like three days. trent's ex-wife is texting him like "babe why are you a meme now". keeleys like "good news this is great pr! bad news [sends trent a candid shot of ted scooping him up unexpectedly and trent very obviously blushing]" and trents like "ah." some of the photos are hilariously blurred in motion. they're pretty much all smiling. forget about the realistic "but would they get criticism for not taking practice seriously" shhhh. everyone is enjoying this. it's about the wholesome nature of the whole team playing around and genuinely having fun together and also trent is too. formerly feared respected scary journalist cackling like a little kid while balanced precariously on the shoulders of a premiere league footballer. it's cute. it's also extremely funny. how did anyone find this dork scary

[hopefulromances]

one is on the other's lap, holding their face between their hands, kissing them and instantly forgetting everything else in the room with them + the espectacular sam obisanya and f reader pleaseeeee 😭🩷😭 I can't get enough of your writing

You were nervous. Sam was taking you to his team's annual Christmas party at a collegues house and everyone would be there. You loved Sam, you really did, but this was like jumping into the deep end of meeting friends.

Sam was walking a bit in front of you, his hand in yours leading you, telling your the names of all the people coming and a little bit about them.

So far you had Isaac, who was the team captain and acted tougher than he was, Richard, who would most definietly be bringing someone but would also try and flirt with you at the same time, Jan Maas, who came off blunt but meant the best, and Bumbercatch, who was convinced Christmas was just a corporate holiday made up by capitalists as a way to exploit people.

As you approached the house you found yourself overwhlemed by you nerves and stopping. Sam tugged slightly but then looked back and eralized you had stopped.

"(Y/N), do not worry," He reassured you, ducking his head to look you in the eye. "They are going to love you."

"But what if I say something wrong or, or, or, I'm not cool enough or whatever," you rambled, your eyes darting back and forth between his.

"I promise you that you are 100% cooler than anyone you'll see in there." Sam took you by your forehead and kissed you softly. "You're going to be great."

You smiled gratefully at him and squeezed his hand to let him know you were ready. It turned out, you fit right in with his friends. They all flocked to you immeditaly as you walked in, making sure to let you know that Sam talked about you all the time and that he was totally whipped for you.

At some point you'd gotten pulled aside by the host's, Leslie Higgins's, wife and she was talking to you about your home and family. You answered her questions graciously but kept looking over at Sam talking and laughing with his friends.

Finally, you had to excuse yourself to go talk to him. Sam saw you on approach and uncrossed his legs to make room for you to sit. You sat down so you were sideways on his lap, arms around his neck.

"So, how are you doing?" He checked, rubbing his hand up and down your leg.

You nodded at him, feeling quite content in his lap. "Good, your friends are all so kind."

You looked around at the group. Practically the whole team was there, all excited to be around each other and share in the many holidays they were all celebrating. It was so heartwarming to know how close the team was.

"They're a good guys," Sam agreed, following your gaze. "Even if they can be a little crazy from time to time."

His gaze lands on Isaac stacking empty beer cans as Richard is talking adamently to Jan Maas about something in french. You giggled as you looked at them. Sam gently brough his hand to your jaw, turning you back to face him.

"But I'm just glad that you are here," he murmured.

You smiled and brought your hands up to cup his face just as delicatly as he was holding yours. Then you kissed him and everyone else in the room vanished. It was just you and him. Forget angry frenchmen, forget the children running around playing with nerf guns, forget beer cans. Just you and Sam.

That was until you were being shot at by said nerf guns.

"No being gross at the dinner table!" One of the younger boys shouted, pointing their nerf gun at you.

"Hey! That's my girlfriend you're talking to!" He moved you off his lap gently and got up to start chasing them. You laughed, watching him run around the table.

[cavehags]

wait what do u think would happen if richmond fc crash landed on yellowjackets mountain (or like the UK equivalent i guess)

oh my godddd okay. timeline-wise, let's say this happens to the ted lasso guys around mid-s1, after dani has arrived but before jamie gets sent back to manchester. so the gang's all here except for jan maas (sorry jan i love u girl). and rebecca, keeley, and higgins flew separately. sorry :(

the plane goes down, and ted doesn't panic. right away, he springs into action from his seat in the front of the cabin. he turns around and immediately he's ushering everyone off who can walk and pairing people up to help each other. they only have one frantic minute, maybe two, but they make it count. roy's leg was pinned by the bar cart, so sam and moe bend down to free him. dani all but carries nate off the plane. beard makes quick work of checking the cockpit to see if he can do anything to help the pilots, and when he comes across a bloody and unsalvageable mess, he closes the cockpit door to keep anyone else from seeing it before hustling off to help the survivors.

there are a lot of injuries, but mostly cuts and bruises. in a stroke of especially bad luck, nate has what looks like a broken right arm and a sprained left ankle, leaving him quite helpless. roy's leg is in even worse shape, mostly skinned from the knee down. after beard spends some hours sewing up the gash (rip to the numerous shirts that gave their lives to blot roy's bleeding), his captain's armband is repurposed as a grim bandage over the part of the injury that wasn't quite so bad as to require stitches. putting any weight on the leg at all is out of the question.

beard is the team's de facto doctor and nurse. at one point roy even protests that his sister is a doctor so he knows his way around a wound. ted very kindly shushes him so that beard can work.

two teammates from the reserve squad didn't survive, plus the two pilots. they have a memorial the first night.

no one has any cell service, so it's agreed that everyone will keep their phones off to preserve battery. each day, ted picks two of the players to trek out in a different direction and go just a little bit farther than their teammates went the day before before turning their phones on to see what they get. it's understood that this whole routine can only last a week at max before the turned-off phones die for good, so the exercise feels really grim. to counter that, ted tries to make it fun, challenging each day's hikers to do some ridiculous fitness challenge when they're out on their own. it actually has the desired effect. inevitably, doing pull-ups from a tree branch while singing out one's teammate's football chant will make anyone laugh. the effects on team morale are modest, but they are felt.

sleeping outside isn't comfortable for anyone. roy is horrified to realize that his injury means he can't walk to a private area to wash up or use the bathroom, and not for lack of trying. he urges the rest of the team to move the main camp further away so that his space can be just his own. instead of abandoning their captain while he's nursing a traumatic injury (good idea though roy!), the team work together to create a privacy barrier for roy. he's touched, but he curses at them in miserable gratitude.

due to the obscene amount of lucozade sport the team had onboard, the question of fresh water doesn't come up right away. when it does, it's almost an accident; jamie and richard were on their daily cell service check when they stumbled upon a lake. unbeknownst to jamie and richard, ted had hesitated to pair them up together, or frankly to send either of them out at all, knowing that neither one is overly endowed with sense--but ruling out all the dumbest players would be a slippery slope till there was no one left, so he did. it is unfortunate, then, that they were the ones who happened to find the lake, because getting back to camp takes nearly all of their collective brain cells. finding their way back to the lake with the rest of the team and all their kit takes a solid three days, and that's with the added benefit of beard's tracking skills to speed up the process. that's three days to replicate a walk that took under four hours the first time. there are many wrong turns. roy, who has to lean on isaac in order to walk and hates every second of it, nearly throttles jamie after an hour-long detour downhill through the mud ends with him falling on his face. after that, it's another whole day of walking before they finally reach water and roy gets to wash up.

they don't make it there until just after dark on the third day, so they camp on the beach for the night. (wary to sleep out in the open after his poor sense of direction nearly compelled a mud-splattered roy to murder him in cold blood, jamie sleeps between colin and isaac for security. they're not feeling too keen on him either--but jamie doesn't think they'd let him die.)

in the morning, dani wakes everyone up by shouting about god and sunlight the coming of rescue. everyone blearily rubs sleep out of their eyes before they realize that he's talking about a glint of light reflecting off of something shiny in the trees. ted has gotten it into everyone's heads by now that that they don't go running off without the buddy system, so dani waits until thierry begrudgingly gets to his feet before sprinting off toward the light, thierry trotting behind him at a more moderate pace.

when they return, dani insists that it's not rescue, but everyone still must follow them out to the light right away. "what's out there, fellas?" ted asks, to which dani just responds in a reverent whisper, "outlets."

there are indeed outlets in the cabin and a mad dash ensues during which everyone with an iphone charger races to commandeer one for himself. ted looks at beard and beard back at ted. "it's starting to look like one of those black friday stampedes," ted observes, with a tone that implies "should i call it off?" beard takes control of the situation by informing them all that if they blow the generator, there'll be no more phones for potentially a lot longer than they've already gone without. it's agreed that one person may charge his phone at a time, on a rotation to be determined by nate the great, and the daily cell service check will become more of a constant shared duty than a revolving chore.

that day, they get comfortable and pick places to sleep and take a bunch of ussies on dani's phone (the first to be charged up, which everyone agrees is more than fair). it's not until jamie howls "my hair looks shit, don't post that!" that they all remember they're in the wilderness.

ted quietly charges his phone every night, blue light lighting up his face as he watches videos of henry when everyone else is asleep. sometimes, beard will sit up with him and appear to be reading a book in insomniac solidarity until he says something like "he's a really good climber" or "he could do legos at the competitive level, you know." at every mention of henry, ted's heart explodes with gratitude.

the team are vegetarians for, like, a while. although the lack of protein is throwing off the players' meal plan, no one is exactly eager to pick up the gun they find in the house and point it at something. isaac says something about how how gaffer's the american, after all, he should know his way around a gun--but beard shoots him a hard look before he can say that again in ted's earshot, and indeed, ted never touches the thing. beard knows ted's triggers well enough to know that a loaded gun would be... well, a loaded gun, as far as ted's psychology is concerned.

roy is doing pretty badly with the whole being-incapacitated thing. being old and slow was bad enough, but not being able to walk unaided is a final humiliation that he doesn't think he can live with. when dani surprises him with a gift he found in the woods that turns out to be a bit of wood he whittled into the shape of a cane, roy loses it. he thanks dani through gritted teeth (because not even roy kent can bring himself to shout at dani rojas), and with the help of the horrifyingly useful gift, hobbles outside and lumbers around in the woods for a couple hours until sundown. when he returns, he drags behind him a pig that he killed by strategically falling on top of it. ("so you could say you made your injury work for you, if you feel like looking at a silver lining," ted tells him with an air of forced cheer. roy growls at him, which is pretty much what ted expected.)

roy and nate make miserable eye contact around the bonfire while everyone else eats roast pork. finally roy caves and reaches for a piece, eyeing nate like "i won't tell if you won't."

after a while, roy starts to heal, but the damage he did to his opposite knee from hobbling around on his good leg doesn't seem like it's going away. for a while, he keeps the cane buried under his bed for the sake of his pride (because yes, being the oldest and the most injured means he got a bed, and he tries hard to appreciate that as the gift that it is to not have to sleep on the floor instead of being furious and embarrassed about it). but the more he's able to walk without it most of the time, the more he recognizes that simply having the cane on him would give him peace of mind for the moments when his knee spasms and suddenly he can't. also, and he's prepared to admit this bit to the first person to ask him about it--it's bloody useful when it comes to bashing whatever animal he's found to serve them all for dinner. so he keeps hunting and he keeps the cane.

there's a night when they all get high on mushrooms (on purpose; sam finds them and presents them to beard, who recognizes the genus and gets the whole team's consent before putting them in some tea. sam personally abstains and decides to act as more of a chaperone). it ends up being really chill, actually. mostly they just share some secrets and talk about death.

high on mushrooms, jamie and roy babble about how much they miss keeley. at some point, the babbling turns into sobbing in each other's arms. watching them with wide eyes, sam dares to think that the two rivals might finally be coming to some kind of understanding.

there are fights sometimes--like the day jamie nearly takes colin's head off for nicking the last of his pomade--but nothing rises to urgent levels. mostly, arguments are settled with words while ted mediates.

there's not much cult stuff, either--while the entire team would admit to believing in ghosts, and that skeleton they found crumbling in the loft was nobody's favorite part of the house, the closest thing they have to cultlike devotion to anything is their appreciation for the screeners of lust conquers all that jamie has downloaded on his phone. ("they keep calling me asking me to be on it! had to see what it was about, didn't i?") it's not great telly, but at least it's something to watch if they all cluster around and stay very, very quiet. when they reach the end of the batch of episodes jamie has saved, they're all in a bit of a mood about not knowing how the season ends--but roy is able to solve that problem by relaying the finale to them, eliciting gasps in all the right places. the mums he did yoga with were very faithful to their telly schedule.

overall, it's tough being stuck out there, but they're alive, and they have ted and beard to care for them emotionally and quasi-medically, and they have their phones, which offer a lot of very welcome distractions even if none of them involve communication. one day sam finds an open clearing where they can play football, and that's a game changer--they play reserves versus starters, with ted and nate filling in the gaps on the reserve side and beard playing for roy. with the addition of football to their little routine, life out there starts to just feel like living.

and no one eats anyone. okay this post is 2,000 words long so BYE!